You say Prince, I say the Pretenders. You say "The Breakfast Club," I say "Blue Velvet." You say Kajagoogoo, I say … "Gesundheit"?

When you get beyond the most enduring clichés of the 1980s -- the big hair, the neon color schemes, the blissfully ridiculous musical acts (can't quite remember, were Kajagoogoo and Bananarama bands or brands of baby food?), the pop-culture experience of the '80s was a different trip for everyone.

There was the '80s of hair-metal glam bands; the '80s of mopey British synth acts; the peppy '80s (John Hughes movies) vs. the dyspeptic '80s ("Blade Runner").

So which does Lamb's Players Theatre pick as the focus of "miXtape," a new revue billed as "a musical journey through the '80s"? Pretty much all of them.

The sprawling show, created by longtime ensemble members Jon Lorenz and Colleen Kollar Smith, pinballs so dizzyingly through the decade that its theme song could be X's "Breathless" (one of the seemingly few New Wave era tunes not included in the two-act, two-and-a-half production).

Yet the show hangs together admirably for the most part, thanks to its versatile performers, a crack band, director Kerry Meads' turn-on-a-dime staging and the writers' savvy concept, which uses the iconic idea of an old-school cassette mixtape as a pretext for flashdancing through nearly every '80s phenom imaginable.

The show also benefits from the fact the 1980s were demonstrably the greatest decade ever. (At least when it came to guilty pleasures.)

As the New Yorker critic Terrence Rafferty once wrote, "Every period -- no matter how barren it looks to those who didn't grow up in it -- turns ultimately into someone's idea of a golden age."

Yet even if you don't have forever imprinted on your brain the memory of that golden moment spent entangled on a dance floor to Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels," the show still may engage through sheer force of energy.

Its eight characters are drawn loosely from "The Breakfast Club," the late Hughes' movie whose litany of misfits is recited almost like a holy devotional by Allison (Joy Yandell). She and the others start out as present-day adults slogging their way through life to the tune of the Bangles' "Manic Monday" (with a cute line change about "kissing Molly Ringwald").

A sudden cascade of mixtapes dangling from the ceiling, though, takes them on a mental trip back to the time before the Cabbage Patch Dolls' crop went fallow.

"They read like my diary," one says of the tapes. And what's in those entries? Huey Lewis, the Smurfs, "Too Shy," Mr. T, "The Facts of Life," Betamax, Wang Chung, "Walk Like an Egyptian," the Buggles, Aussie Shampoo, "Top Gun," Pac-Man and on. Even Nine Inch Nails makes it in, which is almost certainly a first for Lamb's. (One errant note: the Billy Joel song "My Life" is actually from the late '70s.)

The transitions are canny for the most part -- one bit that has the band dressed up as favorite '80s horror-flick characters segues into the theme from "Ghostbusters," complete with the show's four men in uniform and armed with plasma blasters.

Some, though, are more jarring -- the dopey tune "Eye of the Tiger" crashing into a sober interlude about the Challenger space-shuttle disaster.

Lance Arthur Smith, as the jock figure Jake, turns in some of the funniest bits, in a "Top Gun" spoof and an ode to Patrick Swayze; Louis Pardo is the nerdy Brian, earning laughs over his heartfelt analysis of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'"; the talented singer-actor Leonard Patton, as the DJ Winston, makes a memorable Mr. T and member of Run DMC; and Spencer Rowe, as tough-guy Hardy, shows comic chops (and some leg) in a "Risky Business" takeoff and elsewhere.

Among the women, Yandell is strong as the streetwise Allison, with a quietly engaging take on Suzanne Vega's "Luka"; Season Marshall Duffy inhabits a host of chirpy '80s ladies, including Madonna; Michelle Pereira is the no-nonsense Melanie, a bit of a music snob who still confesses affection for the exquisitely cheekboned Duran Duran; and Marci Ann Wuebben is the tender-hearted Claire, who speaks touchingly of making a mixtape for a favorite uncle stricken by AIDS.

Politics and social troubles mix a little uneasily with the the over-the-top tone that dominates much of the show, but Lorenz and Kollar Smith are smart not to go too maudlin. The latter also turns in some splashy choreography on numbers like "The Right Stuff," while Lorenz's musical arrangements give Andy Ingersoll's potent band (featuring ace guitar work by Nick Spear) plenty to work with.

Jemima Dutra's costumes are a show all their own, nailing the decade's most entertaining excesses; and Mike Buckley's sets, with their catwalks and geometric motifs, could be straight out of an MTV video circa 1984.

If the characterizations in "miXtape" are a little sketchy, that's maybe not surprising for a revue. A bigger issue in the show at this point is that it doesn't quite know when to end.

The characters appear to return to the present (or go back to the future, if you prefer) to the tune of Tears for Fears' fitting "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." Yet the show continues past at least two more potential conclusions, including R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," a definitive coda if ever there was one.

Still, give the writers credit: Taking on the entirety of the '80s is a (totally) awesome challenge. All in all, they whip it good.

The 209th anniversary of the Grito de Independencia (Mexican Independence Day) will be celebrated Sunday and among the planned festivities in San Diego is the return of the traditional ceremony to the Mexican consulate after nearly 20 years.